#JournalismNextGen

Today, students in the Capital Region interested in journalism gathered at the Carey Center in Rensselaerville to attend workshops and talk to people in the field. Students had a variety of workshops to pick from like: The art of interviewing celebrities, covering politics, narrative storytelling and sports’ writing, just to name a few.

The packed auditorium gathered students from Shaker, Athens, Academy of Holy Names, New Visions: Journalism and Media Studies, New Visions: Law and Government, and Voorhesville High School.

The convention started with Rex Smith, the editor of the Times Union, who gave us a better understanding of what a good journalist consists of. He said “There’s always something on the pike coming at you.” and explained what we, as aspiring journalists, should be prepared for. His speech was soon followed by our first workshop with Joe Donahue, WAMC-FM’s Roundtable host.

Joe Donahue shared with us his knowledge of “The art of interviewing celebrities.” He encouraged us to start getting involved now so we have the experience employers look for when it comes time to apply for jobs. He used his own interviewing skills when he passed out index cards and had each one of us write our name, what we want to do when we get older, and one celebrity we would want to interview if we were given the chance. He then went around and asked us each to explain why we picked what we did, and gave us question ideas to ask people we are interviewing.

Ian Stewart, a senior in the New Visions: Law and Government class attended the “Covering politics” workshop. He said that before this convention he was more interested in politics, but now is considering mixing his love of politics with journalism.

The second workshop that Courtney and I attended was “Visual Storytelling”, taught by Will Waldron, the Times Union photo editor. Through his presentation we saw some of his work and learned what goes into taking a good picture. One of Waldron’s main points was to make sure that you as the photographer capture the emotion in front of you. We got a chance to look through his photos from Sandy Hook, and his skills were evident.

A senior at the Academy of Holy Names, Madison Mendel said that through the aggregating online workshop she attended, she has only gotten more excited about her future career in journalism. We found this to be true with most students that we talked to.

This convention truly helped us not only learn the technical side of journalism, but also allowed us to explore the wide variety of careers that journalism has to offer.

Special thanks to: Minds On of the Rensselaerville Institute, the Times Union, the College of Saint Rose, The Carey Conference Center for Global Good and Carol Ash and all other sponsors for making this possible today. We hope this continues in the future, and that every student had just as much fun as we did.